After a wonderful sunny day at the Blue Lagoon, we awoke to overcast and windy conditions for our sail across to Korcula, 55nm away. We cut across the western ends of Brac and then Hvar and sailed toward the strait that separated Korcula from the mainland.
Korcula is the most populated of the Dalmatian Islands and one of the largest. It’s also home to some pretty good white wine. We headed for Korcula town, which the lonely planet guide describes as a stunner.Its another walled city, a mini Dubrovnik overlooking the channel that runs between Korcula and the mainland, complete with narrow marble streets and a row of restaurants and bars high up on the wall overlooking the sea.
Our plan was to anchor in Uvala Luka, half a mile from Korcula Town but it looked a bit yukky, especially when a big power boat pulled up an old fishing net on its anchor, so we headed around the corner and anchored at a very pleasant spot just in front of the old monastery at Otok Badija, another Ooroo recommendation.
Safely anchored, we thought about dinner and discovered one of the restaurants mentioned in a Sailing in Croatia tourist book we had picked up was a 15 minute dingy ride around the corner at a small village called Lumbarda. We made a reservation and set off to find Zure, no 64 on the Tour de Fork 2013 hit parade. After a bit of a walk, we found it tucked away up a small road well away from the touristy spots on the waterfront.
The food was exception, all home grown. We discovered salted fish – didn’t sound particularly nice, but the waiter insisted and he put us on a winner. The octopus dish was great as was the fish, caught fresh that day. And the turkish coffee at the end of the night was awesome – and I don’t drink black coffee.
Next day, we headed off to explore Korcula town. We had a great day wandering the streets, looking in shops, and visiting the Marco Polo museum, where we brushed up on one of history’s great explorers, who was supposedly born in Korcula according to the myriad of Marco Polo shops that were scattered around. Interestingly Marco brought back spaghetti to Italy from China amongst other things. At the end of the day we headed for the Massimo Bar to open so we could climb the ladder to the top of the turret where it was located and enjoy a couple of cocktails, which were delivered from below via a pulley system. Cool.
Next day, we thought we should go for a walk around the Island where the monastery stood. It took an hour or so to do the walking track that went around the coast. Then we had a footy game to listen to on the internet, as Freo flogged the Swans (yes…I know I’m miles behind in the blog – too busy having fun to write about it!)
My good friend Zeljko’s cousin, Rade lives on Korcula in a small village called Zavalatica and we had arranged to call in and see him on the Sunday. We pulled up anchor and headed around the island to Zavalatica, which is on the south side of Korcula. But the wind gods conspired against us and with 40kts on the nose we decided to turn back and wait a few hours. It was a good strategy as this gave the wind time to drop off a bit and once we made it around to the south side we had a very pleasant sail to Rade’s village.
We got there about 5pm to find Rade on the town wall ready to help us tie up.
For pictures of Korcula see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200362836306419&type=1&l=3c81e296a5
A Little Bit of Mischief 